In “Mannerism,” Mark Gleason continues to use Mannerist techniques with oil on canvas to explore existential themes via absurdist situations. Animals are often included to define aspects of the relationship of a central character’s orientation or connection to the world via communion or costume in psychologically fraught, private environments. Gleason’s subjects are shown in moments of preparation and conflict — his figures have roles to assume, and in doing so, a form of inner self is revealed. His metaphoric images may seem cryptic but represent the underdog and the disenfranchised deriving fearsome capability from the mask of the powerful; figures communing with animals, or donning the guise of animals, holding knives out like some kind of animal self-protection stance or the Sisyphean struggle of attempting to lift books when you’re standing on them.

“Hopefully, my wit comes through in each painting. I would feel successful if I could convey the same kind of absurd humor found in Samuel Beckett’s writing. The imagery is a construct that has multiple meanings and layers and I leave blanks for the viewers to fill in. I’ve come to see that others bring their own stories and feelings to the work. I’ve intentionally fostered that kind of response with recent work, and I’m honored and challenged in creating something that may spark others to open their own responses to the work. I resonate to a statement by Degas to the effect that art is not what you see, but what you make others see.” states Gleason, whose work is also inspired by novelist Cormac McCarthy and silent film star Buster Keaton.

Fawn Fruits aka Daniel Hyun Lim relishes the spontaneity of the art and moves things as he goes with colored pencils and acrylics. His works are somewhat timeless with a striking juxtaposition of muted versus vibrant hues. The colors are an anchor to reality and are a huge factor to the symbolic message that he is telling. “Somewhere over the colors of the rainbow there lies a significantly beautiful truth, a truth that can only be realized with an intimate encounter. “Sweet IMperfections” is an artistic interpretation of a promise between the creation and his/her creator” states the artist. Rather than forcefully preaching to the viewer with religious imagery and symbolism, Lim brings new life to the genre by producing work that is based on his personal views on religion. “Although we see ourselves as imperfect souls, in the eyes of a loved one, we are perfect” states Lim who feels that there are enough serious paintings in the world that shout and make big statements. He wants his work to be more subtle and speak peacefully to the viewer and to bring a moment of tranquility. His dream is to show the world some love, one Fawn Fruits at a time. Lim is an illustration instructor at Otis college of Art and Design, Santa Monica College and Red Engine Studios. www.fawnfruits.com

Danni Shinya Luo’s female forms breathe with a sensuality and intuition that will shatter your preconceptions about her chosen medium, the watercolor painting. Shinya’s fluid and organic figures are full of feminine mystery and romance. Her colorful animals are magnificently fierce, emanating a primal magnetism that is practically pheremonic. In “Chaotic Harmony,” using whimsical and subtly erotic figures, the interactions of human beings with their avatars from the animal kingdom convey modern psychological truths while relating age-old mythologies. The concept of this new collection is birthed from the artist’s own internal world; her past experiences are transformed into physical creatures, textures and color palettes. The subtextural inclusion of archetypal symbolism is never forced nor heavy-handed, but further enriches the central, “surface” view with allegorical depth –a reward for those willing to investigate just a bit further…

Originally from Shanghai, China, Danni Shinya Luo moved to California in 1995. She fell in love with art in grade school and after a few years of private study (and an apprenticeship with Chinese watercolor master, Ding Ha) was accepted into Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, where she majored in illustration and graduated with honor in 2006. Shinya participated in key group shows, select solo exhibitions, and saw her work published in periodicals like Bust and Initiativa, books like “Eye Candy” and “Sugar & Spice,” as well as design projects like Nickelodeon’s Neopets and a line of toy dolls for Hasbro. In the year that has passed since her last featured exhibition, “Spiritual Deficiencies,” Shinya has published a now sold-out collected volume of her gallery exhibited work, “Breaking the Ice.” She also helped develop the re-branding of Marvel Comics’ signature female mutant “X-23” (providing the cover art for the first three issues). Later this year, her second book, “Soft Candy: The Art of Danni Shinya Luo,” will be released through seminal art publisher Last Gasp Books, featuring a collection of 200 full color pages of brand-new drawings and paintings. www.fawnfruits.com

Suffused with pessimistic shadows and redemptive illumination, Canadian pop-surrealist painter Heather Watts’ intricate paintings harness the pageantry of anthropomorphic heroes and martyrs to tell the story of individuals grappling with forces larger than themselves. “Some of the pieces for this show are quite dark thematically, but I’m not interested on focusing on the darkness for its own sake in my work, I’m interested in using it to show light, to paint darkness as something that reveals light, to see the darkness as a canvas for light, an opportunity for light to shine” states the artist.

Watts, who is well-known for her past tiki-inspired paintings has exhibited works in galleries across the US and overseas, including La Luz de Jesus, Strychnin, The Shooting Gallery, M Modern, and Roq la Rue among others. She is a self-taught painter with a Bachelors Degree in Asian Area Studies from the University of British Columbia. www.heatherwatts.com

Official After Party with
The Dick and Jane Family OrchestraFree admission!Taix Resturant1911 Sunset Boulevard
Los Angeles, CA 90026
(213) 484-1265www.taixfrench.com

Incelebration of this show and La Luz de Jesus’ out-of-town guests, Heather Watts (Vancouver, BC) and Mark Gleason (Palo Alto, CA) there is an official after-party in the bar at TAIX, a beautiful French restaurant established in 1927, just a short drive from the gallery on Sunset Blvd in Echo Park. The Dick and Jane Family Orchestra features vocalist Jane Cantillon, her husband Richard Ross on guitar, percussionist Michael Pfeffer and La Luz de Jesus publicist Lee Joseph on bass. The combo plays a hybrid of urban garage folk. The show starts at 11:00 pm and the band starts at 11:30 pm. No cover charge!

TOO FAST TO LIVE, TOO YOUNG TO DIE is a selection of photography, art and ephemera from the California Punk & Hardcore scene with an emphasis on the explosive period of the late 70′s and early 80′s. This exhibition features creative pioneers who were present for the detonation of the Southern California scene and whose imagery helped capture and craft it’s angles, attitudes, music, fashion and sub-culture. Additionally, reflections of other punk scenes throughout California and contemporary collaborations will be presented that were inspired by one of the most potent and relevant periods of individual expression in California history.

Edward Colver has been a Los Angeles-based photographer for over thirty years creating some of the most iconic images of the L.A. punk scene early in his career. Self-taught he had his first photograph published after just three months. A fixture of the early SoCal scene, its been said, “If you went to a show and Edward Colver wasn’t there shooting pictures, you were at the wrong show.” The retrospective exhibition and publication, “Blight at the End of the Funnel” was hosted by Cal State Fullerton in 2006 and the documentary “American Hardcore” featured many of his images.

Glen E. Friedman is based in New York City and is one of the most revered photographers of his generation, continually capturing rebellious individuals from the musical and youth sub-cultures. In 1982, he photographed, art directed and published the influential punk zine “My Rules”, one of the first comprehensive documents and commercially successful chronicles of the American hardcore punk scene. Continuing through the 1980s and 90′s, he captured classic punk and hip-hop images of Black Flag, Minor Threat, Public Enemy, Run DMC and more, many of which are considered the subject’s definitive portrait. Since 1997 his exhibition, “Fuck You All” has been consistently traveling both nationally and internationally, highlighting important works that span throughout his prolific career. His photographs are in the collections of institutions such as Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Smithsonian Institute and the Experience Music Project Museum.

Shepard Fairey is based in Los Angeles and is the founder of the Obey Giant street art campaign. Obey Giant was largely modeled after the D.I.Y., by any means necessary, ethos of punk rock. Fairey heard the Alternative Tentacles comp “Let Them Eat Jellybeans” in 1984 and was energized by the music including California bands like Black Flag, The Dead Kennedys, Flipper, and the Circle Jerks.

Jenny Lens, MFA, a native Angeleno, immediately rose to prominence with her first photos of the Ramones first west coast tour, August 1976, ending with the Clash, England, July, 1980. She shot revered and iconic photos of X, Germs, Iggy Pop, Blondie, Patti Smith and many more. Her images are extensively seen in and grace the covers of many major punk books, CDs, DVDs, docs, TV. She is hailed as the most published West Coast photographer documenting the early punk scene of 1976-80. In addition, her popular online postings of historical recollections continue to provide accurate first-hand insights into an often under-documented scene, especially from a West Coast woman’s point of view. Her solo book, “Punk Pioneers, When Punk was Fun,” was published by Rizzoli/Universe.

Dave Markey and Jordan Schwartz are the founders of the zine “We Got Power” which documented the Southern California punk scene in the early 1980′s. The subsequent photographs it produced uniquely captured this important period. Schwartz was also a producer for Lovedoll Films and served as press and booking agent for SST Records during this period. According to the 1985 Rolling Stone article he was one of the last people to sleep on the floor of the now-legendary record company, “If you work for SST Records you have to be prepared to sleep on the floor”. Markey’s work in film/video created some of the most important documents of it’s time and included collaborations with Sonic Youth, Raymond Pettibon, Nirvana, Mudhoney, The Ramones, Black Flag and many more. His films have been in festival screenings both national and internationally, including the United Kingdom screening tour entitled “Desperate Cinema” in 2005. A solo exhibition of his films was hosted by Seventeen Gallery in London in 2009. Most recently a selection were included in the Sonic Youth internationally traveling retrospective “Sensational Fix”.

Raymond Pettibon is based in Venice, California and is a leading figure in the international artworld who sprang from the world of California punk and illustration and whose work is now in the permanent collections of galleries and museums throughout the world. His early artistic roots lie in music, specifically in the Los Angeles punk rock scene designing artwork for SST Records and bands such as Black Flag, The Minutemen, and Sonic Youth. He has had museum exhibitions at MOCA, SFMOMA, Philadelphia Museum of Art, The Whitney Museum of American Art, Centro de Arte Contemporaneo de Malaga, Spain and many more. He has been the recipient of numerous awards including the Bucksbaum Award in relation his installation at the 2004 Whitney Biennial.

Winston Smith is a San Francisco-based artist whose roots lie in punk rock album cover design and collage imagery. His early work involves album art for the Dead Kennedys and has gone on to create over 50 record covers and has had numerous international exhibitions of his artwork over the last thirty years. Last Gasp has published a large selection of his work and he recently had a retrospective exhibition “Deep Dimension” in San Francisco, CA.

Rafa’s is a well kept secret, right in the middle of Echo Park – the beautiful but small hand-built gallery shows sculpture and paintings, and also boasts a small stage with a intimate living-room vibe.

Historian, music fan, guitarist, singer, songwriter Skip Heller has researched and produced records with the likes of Les Baxter, Robert Drasnin, Sammy Masters, has played with legends such as Yma Sumac, has written and produced music for The Flinstones and Dexter’s Laboratory, among many other things. His current group, The Skip Heller Trio, provides Heller with a vehicle to play and sing his songs which are as inspired by great American songwriters of the Brill Building era as they are Americana roots, country and rockabilly. The Trio performs covers such as Jimmy Skinner’s “Doin’ My Time” which showcase Heller’s ability to really smoke on lead – played on an acoustic guitar. Backed by Dionysus Records’ head honcho Lee Joseph on bass and Mark Borinstein on drums, the combo also has the ability to whip out cover tunes they’ve never played before and make them sound like they’ve rehearsed them!

The Dick and Jane Family Orchestra were formerly known as Dick and Jane, a husband-wife duo featuring Richard Ross and one of Los Angeles original “100 punks,” filmmaker and producer Jane Cantillon who has worked with the likes of Tyra, Hard Copy, Howie Mandell and many others. When Lee Joseph was approaching the end of his almost decade long DJ residencies, he was invited to see a screening of Cantillon’s “The Other Side” documentary. The duo performed and Joseph told them that that they could use a bassist. After dusting off an instrument he pretty much put down in 2000, Joseph joined the duo in February of 2010. Shortly after, Michael Peffer, drummer of Biblical Proof of UFOs joined the threesome as their percussionist and the group became The Dick and Jane Family Orchestra (with Joseph and D&J’s “fake” son and Pefffer as their “fake” nephiew.) The group plays a hybrid of beat, folk and garage with acoustified versions of Velvet Underground, Question Mark and The Mysterians and Jimi Hendrix, along with Cantillon’s catchy and humorous originals about Los Angeles, the last taboo (smoking)and of course, men.

The two groups will be joined by singer-songwriter Christopher Lockett.A $5 donation is appreciated!

All three original members of the legendary Detroit / LA transplants, The Dogs performing, “Fed UP” at The Masque reunion in 2007. It has been a little over a year since Masque founder Brendan Mullen passed away. Think good thoughts for Brendan and thank him for his contributions to music and journalism – punk rock in particular – they are plentiful. Do a Google search on his name if you want to know more.

Richard Kalisher loves art – so much that he publishes a magazine called American Contemporary Artthrough his American Contemporary Magazine Group. Since moving to Los Angeles from New York, Richard has become a fan of Southern California’s New Contemporary Art and started up a publication called Pop Surrealism Magazine which is dedicated to supporting artists and galleries in the New Contemporary Art Scene. Richard can be found attending art openings all over Los Angeles, checking out the works and chatting with the artists.

He has just released the second issue for Fall 2010 on the web and a print version will be available in a few days. We will hopefully be selling the magazine via Dionysus Mail Order as well!

The Skip Heller Trio — featuring Lee Joseph on bass and Mark Borinstein on drums — once again takes the stage at Rafa’s Gallery, a
tiny and charming venue at Sunset and Glendale in Echo Park. Ostensibly a country band, the trio is also colored by a love for 60s garage rock, Philly soul, exotica, and Roger Miller. The crack rhythm team of Joesph and Borinstein is a perfect match for Heller’s virtuoso jazz-meets-bluegrass guitar and his soulful baritone. The great Patria Jacobs opens.